Friday, February 26, 2010

Downtown in the rain...

We've spent the last week and a half wondering out loud if we should head into downtown Vancouver to fight the crowds and experience the Olympic spirit up close and personal. So we finally decided to bite the bullet. We pulled the kids out of school and headed down to catch the Sky Train so we could do some exploring.

Highlights of the day:

Erin giving some friendly jibes at the Americans on the Sky Train. All good natured of course.

The 30 minute line up in the rain to see the Olympic Cauldron.

Kid meltdowns. Aidan at the Olympic cauldron. Becca at the Red Burrito. (But they trooped on through and I think they have some great memories from the early start to their Spring Break.)

Meeting up with friends in the rain outside the CTV booth. Then having Aidan go "exploring" while we had a brief heart attack.

The guy with the balloon animals. (He could make Homer Simpson and Krusty the Clown!)

The 20 minute line up to get into the Olympic store.

Chatting with complete strangers about hockey.

Having close to a dozen comments about my Habs jersey. (Mostly good.)

Watching curling in a storefront window with close to 25 other true Canadians.

Sure we probably didn't see even 1/4 of what was downtown, butI'm glad we can say "we were there."

And while it would have been nice to experience Olympic life on a day that didn't feel like winter, I'm pretty sure the crowd was cut in half. And even with that it still felt like being in Disneyland at times.

Makes me wish I would have bought some tickets to go to an event. But I would have had to sell a kidney.

(Bonus Points: Can you name the song from which the title of this blog post comes?)